Citizen Science on the Somerset Coast – Somerset Wildlife Trust
Mark Ward, a life-long marine ecologist and environmental educator who currently works for Somerset Wildlife Trust explains how citizens are collecting valuable data on coastal and offshore wildlife in Somerset.
As we become more aware of the impact humanity is having on species across many terrestrial and marine habitats it is becoming increasingly beholden on us to ensure we understand more about wildlife and nature. What species are present in different places? What conditions do they need to survive? Is their abundance, distribution and range increasing or decreasing? What are causing any changes? And most importantly what can we do to slow down, halt or even reverse many of the downward trends linked with the impending global ecological crisis.
Environmental scientists rely on large datasets to identify and explain many of these changes and patterns. An increasingly useful way of collecting such data is to work with ordinary citizens.
In recent years citizen science projects have been proliferating and becoming more sophisticated in their design so that even people with little initial knowledge and expertise can collect useful information. In the UK there are many different environmental projects that people can get involved in, being run by a whole range of academic institutions and conservation groups. The Somerset Wildlife Trust has recently launched several exciting new citizen science surveys along our coastline as part of the Somerset’s Brilliant Coast Project (funded by HPC EDF Community Mitigation Fund and the National Trust).
Sea Watch Surveys: these monthly surveys of porpoises, seals and dolphins are organised in conjunction with the Sea Watch Foundation. Volunteers meet at different headlands and viewpoints along the coast between Porlock and Portishead. Armed with binoculars and identification guides, they survey the sea for a two-hour period. There has probably never been such an extensive survey along the Somerset coast. It is hoped the data will give us a much clearer idea of what is out there and how common sightings are. The main sightings are likely to be of porpoises as there is a known population in the Bristol Channel. They can commonly be spotted off Hurlstone Point in Porlock Bay especially in the summer, but they could well be equally common in winter months here and at other locations. As we have never really looked in a systematic way we don’t really know. Individual records do exist right up the Channel and into estuaries of the Severn, Avon and Parrett rivers. It is likely other cetaceans such as dolphins are less common and probably not resident, but sightings of them and also of seals are occasionally made, as well as other unusual visitors like the sunfish, a large warm water fish with a tall fin that comes into the channel in the summer following its favourite prey, jellyfish.
All the data from these surveys is collated nationally by the Sea Watch foundation as well as being stored locally at the Somerset Environmental Record Centre. Knowing about cetacean populations is important because as top predators their numbers can be affected by overfishing as well as through being caught as ‘by-catch’ in fishing gear. With their highly sensitive echo-location systems they are also adversely affected by underwater noise pollution. Of particular concern now is noise from pile drivers constructing new offshore wind farms. There are currently no wind farms in the Bristol Channel but with the boom in this renewable energy source it may be only a matter of time before this may change. Anyone who wants to take part in these surveys can sign up via the Somerset Wildlife Trust website: https://www.somersetwildlife.org/what-we-do/restore-somersets-nature/create-living-landscapes/somersets-living-coast/seawatch
We also offer training so that people can carry out surveys in their own time as well as part of the organised monthly events.
ShoreSearch surveys are part of a national Wildlife Trusts citizen science project to monitor the distribution and abundance of intertidal organisms all around the UK coast. Somerset Wildlife Trust has just begun to carry out regular surveys using a team of enthusiastic volunteers and experts. Eight to ten surveys are made at low tide at different beaches throughout the Spring, Summer and Autumn. Regular training days are held and the Somerset Wildlife Trust website has links to videos to help with identification skills:
People are also just welcome to come along to the surveys and learn ‘on the job’.
The surveys involve randomly placing a number quadrats (square sampling frames) in defined sample areas on the shore. Volunteers then identify all the species in each quadrat and estimate their cover or numbers. The sample areas are mapped using GPS so that the same locations can be revisited year after year to show changes over time as well as geographical differences along the coast. Surveys of this highly varied coast have not been carried out in detail for many years, so the data is helping to build a much richer picture of the intertidal habitats and species found here. Somerset Wildlife Trust has also recently completed a broader survey which maps out the intertidal zone into different colour coded habitat types. You can view this as an Explorer Map at:
Somerset’s rocky shores may at first not seem as spectacular as those of Devon and Cornwall, but locations such as the unusual boulder shore, with its fringing kelp forest, found at Gore Point near Porlock have a huge diversity of species including beautiful sea slugs and a multitude of species of snails, crabs and seaweeds. Further east the huge tidal range of the Bristol Channel and its gradually changing salinity and silt load mean that many interesting changes in species can be described. Somerset also has some unusual habitats like the extensive reefs of the honeycomb worm found between Minehead and Stolford. The ShoreSearch survey data is added to a national data base which is available for use by government and non-government agencies and other researchers.